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just to recap...

Thursday 14th May 2009

The showbiz adventures of Mitch Benn

I've had quite a starry couple of weeks, by my standards...

First of all last Saturday-but-one I was at Hampton Court to see Rick Wakeman perform his "Six Wives of Henry VIII" suite.  The show was rather more moving and engaging on an emotional level than you'd expect two-plus hours of noodly prog could be...  To begin with, there was the knowledge that this was the fulfilment of a long-cherished ambition of Rick's; when he first created the piece back in 1973 he approached Hampton Court with a view to performing it in the grounds; their response at the time was something along the lines of "Piss off, hippy". 

Of course, a lot has changed since 1973, not least the rise to authority of the generation who included Rick's original fanbase, and with the 500th anniversary of the start of Big H's reign having led the powers-what-be at Hampton Court to decree that All Stops Shall Be Pulled Out Henry VIII-wise, it was actually Hampton Court who approached Rick with the idea of staging the concert.

The gig itself was enriched - and considerably lengthened - by the presence (and I mean PRESENCE) of Brian Blessed as narrator.  Ostensibly there to read out short explanatory links between the "movements", he embellished these with exclamations of horror and triumph as appropriate, and great rambly reminiscences of his own time working on the 1970 film Henry VIII And His Six Wives (he played the Earl of Suffolk, don't you know).  In fairness to Brian, I have it on good authority that he was asked to pad things out a bit to give Rick time to re-programme his customarily gargantuan keyboard rig between "numbers".  It occurred to me late in the performance that Brian wasn't holding a microphone.  I suppose he was wearing some sort of clip-on mic, but seeing as it was Brian it's entirely possible he wasn't being amplified at all...

The show's finale was a new piece Rick had composed for the occasion entitled Tudor Rock; this concluded with Rick (in ermine cape, naturellement) and the ensemble's other keyboardist, Rick's son Adam (currently with Black Sabbath and one of very few rock keyboard players who can hold a candle to his old man), front and centre, engaged in a blistering keytar duel.  I'm not ashamed to say a lump came the throat at this.

 

A couple of days later Clara and I were in a private viewing room in the Mayfair Hotel to see a preview of Coraline, the new film from stop-motion genius Henry Selick, based on the novel by my good friend Neil Gaiman. 

Neil and Henry gave short addresses before the screening. Henry Selick, you'll be pleased to hear, seems to have been designed and animated by Henry Selick.   He's tall and gangly with a long, bony but friendly face, his speech was given in a fruity baritone and illustrated with all manner of gesticulations.  I was half expecting him to launch into a Danny Elfman musical number.

The film itself is literally mind-blowing; in this age of CG it's almost unfathomable that what you're looking at is actually an array of solid objects, hand-manipulated one frame at a time.  Moreover it was the 3D print we saw; the film's use of the technique is artful rather than gimmicky; it folds the movie around you so that the highs and lows hit home even harder. 

Which brings me to my only note of caution; as Neil said in his intro, Coraline is A Horror Movie For Kids.  It has some fantastically startling images and some primally disturbing themes - don't let the little plasticine girl on the poster fool you, this AIN'T your Disney Channel Saturday morning territory.  I'll wait until Greta's eight or nine before I let her see it; I reckon at that age it'll be her favourite movie ever... were she to see it now, she'd never get a decent night's sleep again.

 

Most of the rest of that week was taken up with Astrid's first birthday party, preparations therefore and tidying up thereafter.  My parents stayed around for a few days afterwards, so on Friday I was able - to my immense delight - to take my Dad to the Kingston Odeon to see the new Star Trek movie.  He it was, after all, who first sat me down in front of the old steam-driven TV to watch Classic Trek back when it was on BBC1 on the early 70s, so it was nice to "return the favour".  We both loved the movie... it's exactly what someone needed to do to trek to re-invigorate what had become a very weary franchise, and how clever of JJ to engineer a scenario in which he's free to embrace those bits of "established' Trek history he likes, and blithely ignore those bits he can't be bothered with.

 

Finally, this Monday last I suited up and went to The Sony Awards at the Grosvenor Hotel.  The Now Show was nominated in the best comedy category for the first time since 2004, and as in 2004 we got the bronze.  One more and (I reckon) that adds up to a whole one.  It was a bit depressing as our award was about the fourth announced out of thirty or so, so having had our hopes dashed in the first few minutes we then had to sit there for hours.  

On the plus side, everybody was either genuinely pleased to see me or deemed it politic to pretend to be, and either suits me. Rick was there again, as was Phil Glenister (who I sort of know through rather odd channels) and I had many encouraging conversations along the why-don't-we-work-on-something-together lines.  Probably the vino talking, but I'm still going to chase them all up.  That'll teach 'em.

 

Blimey, look at that!  I was just going to post a quick entry to bring you up to speed on what I've been up to and I appear to have written a novel.  I think I might just have been so relieved not to be restricted to 140 characters for once that I've gone a bit mad...

 

 

 

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